Saturday, May 22, 2010

Capability Gap. No Combat Engineer Vehicle.

I know what you're saying right now.  That's false, we have the Assault Breacher Vehicle.  I would beg to differ.  The Assault Breacher Vehicle is properly named.  It is an assault enabler.  It will clear obstacles, whether tank traps or land mines.  What it can't do is properly assist in the defense.  What it can't do is help with emplacements,  build or destroy berms...do the other tasks that we ask Combat Engineers to do on a daily basis while under fire. 
The vehicle that was suppose to fulfill the role of CEV was the now canceled Grizzly -- that's too bad.

What's worse is the fact that many of our Allies have these vehicles while maintaining much smaller formations than we do.  The German designed and built Kodiak would be a fine addition to our Army's heavy armored formations.

Simply placing a blade on the front of an M1 Abrams is not good enough. The problem with the new direction (and the lack of capability found in our Army) is that we've done a complete 180 from the bearing that was set during the 90's.  The light weight Stryker will in future versions top 30 tons.  The GCV is estimated at a minimum of 50 tons and at its heaviest up to 70 tons!

A light weight, airmobile force of the future is a pipe dream that's already been discarded.  Amazing.  Now get our Army's Sappers a real CEV.

2 comments :

  1. Solomon

    The UK has the Challenger 2 based Trojan, which is very much like the German/Canadian Kodiak

    http://www.thinkdefence.co.uk/2010/02/makes-a-change-from-a-vallon/

    But for lighter formations we used to use the frog, or FV180 Combat Engineer Tractor.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1CDE6eSlRc

    This has been out of service some time now and is being replaced with the Terrier

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3CylxtyjHQ&NR=1

    Air portable by A400 and C17, it can even be driven by remote control (how cool mus that be!)

    and available off the shelf

    http://www.baesystems.com/ProductsServices/l_and_a_ls_terrier.html

    http://www.army.mod.uk/equipment/engineering/1496.aspx

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  2. This is indeed a gap, especially in COIN operations combat engineers are a major asset, an indespensable leg of the mobility-communication-firepower triad.

    The German Leo2 Kodiak was inspired by the Norwegian Leo1 based "Ingeniørpanservogn", and that type sort of set the standard for CEVs.

    I really like the UK approach, were nearly all engineer vehicles are air transportable; especially during early entry that must be handy.

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